Climate Change Will Trigger 140m Migrants By 2050 – World Bank

As conversations around migration continue around the globe, World Bank has said more than 140 million people will move across their countries’ borders by 2050 creating a looming human crisis and threatening the development process.

The World Bank in a report released yesterday, noted that the worsening impacts of climate change in three densely populated regions of the world could trigger the increased migration. According to the report, the “climate migrants” would be additional to the millions of people already moving within their countries for economic, social, political or other reasons

The report stated that concerted action which includes global efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and robust development planning at the country level could see a reduction of the migration by 80 per cent from 140 million to 40 million.

World Bank said the report, “Groundswell – Preparing for Internal Climate Migration”, is the first and most comprehensive study of its kind to focus on the nexus between slow-onset climate change impacts, internal migration patterns and, development in three developing regions of the world: Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.

It finds that unless urgent climate and development action is taken globally and nationally, these three regions together could be dealing with tens of millions of internal climate migrants by 2050.

These are people forced to move from increasingly non-viable areas of their countries due to growing problems like water scarcity, crop failure, sea-level rise and storm surges.

World Bank’s chief executive officer, Kristalina Georgieva said the new research provides a wake-up call to countries and development institutions. “We have a small window now, before the effects of climate change deepen, to prepare the ground for this new reality,” Georgieva said.

“Steps cities take to cope with the upward trend of arrivals from rural areas and to improve opportunities for education, training and jobs will pay long-term dividends. It’s also important to help people make good decisions about whether to stay where they are or move to new locations where they are less vulnerable.”